As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Some information handling systems provide wireless communications on multiple communication protocols. For example, some information handling systems provide Bluetooth (BT) wireless communication capabilities and wireless local area network (WLAN) communication capabilities. Bluetooth is a wireless personal area network (WPAN) technology from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, and Bluetooth is an open standard for short-range transmission of digital voice and data that supports point-to-point and multipoint applications. For WLAN communications, protocols within the IEEE 802.11 standard are often utilized. IEEE 802.11 is a family of IEEE standards for WLANs that were designed to extend wired Ethernet into the wireless domain. The 802.11 standard is more widely known as “Wi-Fi” because the Wi-Fi Alliance, an organization independent of IEEE, provides certification for products that conform to the 802.11 standard. In addition to WiFi, there are other old technologies and new evolving technologies that can be used to provide WLAN capabilities.
One problem with combined Bluetooth and WiFi communication capabilities is that Bluetooth and WiFi networks operate in the same frequency spectrum. Filters on the front-end of communication systems for information handling systems using Bluetooth and WiFi communications typically include wideband filters that pass the entire WiFi spectrums. Thus, there is no channel selectivity provided by these filters for the WiFi communications. Because of the close proximity of the antennas that provide both Bluetooth and WiFi communications, Bluetooth and WiFi technologies interfere with each other when operating simultaneously. This interference often results in significant data throughput reduction of both technologies.
A co-existence scheme, therefore, is desirable in order to reduce or eliminate interference between the two wireless technologies while they are operating simultaneously in the same device. One such scheme is called the Bluetooth adaptive frequency hopping (AFH) channel avoidance scheme. This scheme attempts to design the hopping scheme for the Bluetooth communications in such a way that WLAN channels are avoided. In another current co-existence scheme, a Bluetooth device monitors operating signals from a WiFi device and remains off during the operation of the WiFi device. This results in improved WiFi (e.g., 802.11b/g) throughput, at the expense of a significant reduction of 90% or more in throughput in the Bluetooth communications. In addition, this technique requires the Bluetooth transmitter of the BT radio to be turned off while a receiver of the WiFi radio is receiving a signal in order to avoid or reduce signal interference between Bluetooth and WiFi communications. Another other prior system has used a divided spectrum method to allow both BT and WiFi radios to operate simultaneously. In this solution, Bluetooth communications are allocated a fixed communication bandwidth, and the WiFi communications were allocated a separate fixed communication bandwidth. Once these communication bandwidths are divided and fixed, then communications can occur in the separate bandwidths, thereby reducing interference. However, a disadvantage of this solution is that it forces a modification to the usable signal spectrums for both communication protocols.
Prior solutions to the problem of interference between Bluetooth communications and WLAN (e.g. WiFi) communications, therefore, have not efficiently and effectively dealt with the problem. Further solutions that reduce interference while preserving throughput are desirable.